It didn't last long--a minute or so, maybe. I listened for a
while, but there was nothing to be seen and I heard no more shooting.
Now, I knew the pay-wagon was somewhere on that road, and it struck me
that the bunch that got Hans and Rowan and held us up might have tried
the same game on it; and from the noise I judged it hadn't been a
walkaway. It was a wild guess; but I thought I ought to go down and see,
anyway. Single-handed, and in that dark you could almost feel, I knew I
was able to sidestep the trouble, if it should be Indians or anything I
didn't care to get mixed up in.
"I'd gone about a mile down the slope when the lightning began to tear
the sky open. In five minutes the worst of it was right over me, and one
flash came on top of the other so fast it was like a big eye winking
through the clouds. One second the hills and coulees would show plain as
day, and next you'd have to feel to find the ears of your horse. I
pulled up, for I didn't care to go down there with all that
lightning-play to make a shining mark of me, and while I sat there
wondering how long it was going to last, a long, sizzling streak went
zig-zagging up out of the north and another out of the east, and when
they met overhead and the white glare spread over the clouds, it was
like the sun breaking out over the whole country.
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